Pay no attention to the people behind the curtain

Monday, March 09, 2009

MacGyver Updates

One, the badly written blog post about that inaugural poll from the MacGyver Institute's inaugural poll has been updated--with no notice that a correction has been attempted. Compare before (above) and after (below). Of course, the correction is still misrepresenting the results of the poll, at least according to the group's own press release (.pdf). That claims, "35% of residents blame the state’s budget woes on the downturn in Wisconsin’s job and economic situation." Which is not what the updated post says.

It may also not be what the poll says; the poll was conducted with 500 likely voters, not 500 residents. The likely voters screen in a poll provides a different set of responders than just plain-old residents. No doubt the pollsters probably weighted the results, but as the full poll seems not yet available, including crosstabs and weight information, we won't know.

Also, still no ability for me to log in there and comment.

Two, Cory Liebmann at Eye on Wisconsin answers a complaint raised by James Wigderson in the comments to that original post. Wiggy quotes MacGyver spokesperson Bob Reddin as saying that the convicted criminal Scott Jensen "will take no formal role with the organization." Wiggy adds, "Be nice if someone actually asked someone involved first."

If you take a look at the properties of the last two press releases that have been sent out by The Maciver Institute, the author of those pdf files is none other than Scott Jensen! I would say that writing multiple press releases for an organization qualifies as a "formal role."

That sounded like fun so I thought I would check it myself, and sure enough:That's the above-linked press release, if you're interested, and Scooter's name prominently in the "Author" field.

Of course, it might just be that the MacGyver folks are using Adobe software illegal copied from a legitimate version owned by Jensen. But that's as bad as lying about Jensen's role with the group.